Poet Reese

Reese's class of 4-6 year olds is having a poetry reading contest tomorrow.  She has been practicing!

Plitvice

Ever since we found out we would be moving to Croatia, Scot and I have been totally enamored by the pictures we have seen of Plitvice National Park.  We couldn't wait any longer to go see it, so we hopped in the car on Sunday and drove about 2 hours south of Zagreb to take it all in. We can't wait to see it again after the snow melts and the sun begins to shine once more.

This is the view from the first overlook at Entrance 1.  It took our breath away.

This is taken from about the halfway point as we descended down the trails of switchbacks.  The water colors were absolutely stunning.

Reflections on the lake.

On our way to take a closer look at the "veliki slap".

Traversing a questionable bridge to get there...

Looking down near the base of the big waterfall.

The big one.

Multiple waterfalls on our way back.

A large portion of the park was closed due to the winter season.  When it gets warmer, they start running buses and boats between the various parts of the park.  This was enough, though, for our first visit with the kids.  Like I said above, we really can't wait to get back and expect that most of our upcoming visitors will want to go too.  :-)

Croatian Pancakes

One of the fun things about being in a new country is discovering new cuisine. And so I introduce you to the Croatian pancake. Dating back at least a hundred years ago, when there wasn't a Croatia but there was a Yugoslavia, this breakfast dish became a dietary and cultural staple and continues to live on today.

Actually none of that is true. I don't think I've seen a pancake (as we know it) anywhere outside of our house. Maple syrup is a rare import, stocked at only one grocery store that I know of. Anyway, the Croatian pancake is what you have when you no longer have access to Bisquik, are forced to make pancake batter by scratch, and your 7 year old declares the final product "Croatian pancakes". As in Croatian pancakes are way better than American pancakes (i.e.: what Mom made from the box).

Make these.

Everyday Zagreb. Cafe crazy.

Read any guidebook about Zagreb and it will talk about the plethora of cafes, indoor and outdoor. They are not kidding.  There are literally hundreds.  People here like their coffee.  And wine.  And beer.  All of which you can get at said cafes...just no food.

We have grown to like this local custom quite a bit.  The order is pretty much always the same.  Ava gets kakao (hot cocoa), Reese gets mlijecko (warm milk), and Scot and I usually get coffee with milk or espresso. 

 And look who lost her other front tooth!  That happened on January 29th.  Ava pulled out herself between school and art class.  She's another 10 kuna richer!

There was already one cafe within walking distance of our house, but to our good fortune, they converted this house into a cafe in December, which is even closer.  It's just across the street from the park.

And the other day I was at one of the malls, to drop Ava off at a birthday party.  Just for fun I decided to take a few pictures of the "few" cafes that are there.

Here's one.

And another.

# 3.

One more.

Note that there are 2 outdoor cafes at this mall that I didn't photograph, plus at least 1 or 2 more inside.  Yeah, they like their cafes.

Everyday Zagreb. Gas and VAT.

Stop crying about your $3 and something gas.  It's much worse here.  :-)  And they don't have pay at the pump either.

Here's a look at a fairly recent gas receipt. 

So, what are we looking at here?

Price per liter: 10.38 kuna
Exchange rate:  1 kuna =  .18 USD
Metric conversion:  1 liter = .26 gallon
Value Added Tax (that gets slapped onto everything you buy):  25%

Who has a headache yet?

After punching a bunch of shit into the calculator, it comes to about $7.23/gallon.

So as if paying 517 kuna for a tank of gas (that's 94 dollars, folks) isn't bad enough, you also get to pay a 25% tax, which brings it up to 646.26 kuna.  Final damage - 117 dollars.

On the bright side, as long as we buy gas at Ina, we get that 25% back once every few months, after Scot takes in all of the receipts into the Embassy for stamping and documentation and who knows what else.   I think the guy also sprinkles some magical fairy dust on it as well.  Because it makes that much sense to me.  The 25% tax isn't limited to gas, it's applied to everything you buy here except for milk and bread.  But because we are part of the Diplomat community (and thus not Croatian citizens), we are entitled to get that money back.  The fun part is that each store seems to have their own policy on how to deal with this reimbursement, it's like a surprise every time!  The procedure for us is to say "R-1" (but in Croatian of course, say it with me...it sounds like this: "Air Yay-don") sometime during the checkout process and hope that the cashier has at least some idea of what you're trying to say.  You show your diplomatic ID with a 11 digit "OIB" number, and if all goes well they print out a special receipt.  Some will reimburse with cash right at the store, a few don't add the tax at all...but most require a horribly inefficient second trip to the store to get the money back from a second cashier (after you do the whole fairy dust thing that I described above).  I suspect by the time we're done with this tour we will have donated hundreds of dollars to the local government.  Either inadvertently or because we're lazy.  You're welcome, Croatia.

Everyday Zagreb. Post one.

I thought I'd try a little something this week and call it "Everyday Zagreb", to highlight some of the little nuances about living here.  They all seemed pretty unusual when we first arrived...and now they are just part of the normal landscape.

So, Post one.

One of the first times I went to the grocery store checkout, I had some bananas in my cart.  The cashier rang up all of my items, got to the bananas, looked them over, glared at me and said something not so nice in Croatian.  I shrugged my shoulders and tried to apologize with my eyes.  But I had no idea what I was apologizing for.  She sighed, made a phone call and started ringing up the next person.  I started to bag my groceries in puzzlement and wished I knew how to say, "It's ok, I don't need the bananas." 

It turns out that what I failed to do was weigh my own bananas before I got to the checkout.

Now I know that one or more of these contraptions are located in the produce section of each grocery store.  It's a scale. With numbers.  The numbers correspond to the type of produce.

Each type of produce is labeled with a sign depicting the price and the number that corresponds to the scale.  For example, the oranges in the photo below cost 10.99 Kuna per Kg.  To the left of the price is the number 26 in a circle.  Bag the oranges, put them on the scale, hit the number 26 and a price sticker spits out.  Apply the sticker to the bag.  This makes the checkout lady happy.  So now I know.

Four months

Today officially marks the end of our 4th month in Croatia.

Scot and I went out to dinner here last night and it may have been our favorite meal yet in Zagreb.  Caprese, French Onion soup, and finally some incredible pasta (ravioli for me & gnocchi alfredo for Scot).  All washed down with a delectable white wine.  Mmmm....

Over dinner we agreed that one of our favorite days so far was a day trip to Karlovac and Slunj in late November.  Beautiful weather, cooperative kids (a rare treat indeed), great food, incredible sites and a loose agenda made for a stars aligning kind of journey.

We stopped in Karlovac first, which is about 45 minutes south of Zagreb.  This playground was built using humanitarian funds from Scot's department, Office of Defense Cooperation.  The girls approved.

Karlovac is beautifully situated on the banks of a river.

There is much visible evidence of the early '90s Homeland War.

We drove another 45 minutes to Slunj.  We had a pizza lunch at this quaint little restaurant before we started exploring.

Slunj (pronounced like "Sloon") is absolutely breathtaking - this part of the town is completely built around and within a large chain of waterfalls.

After the waterfalls, we found another playground.

Then we checked out some old castle ruins.

It was dark when we got back to Zagreb.  We decided to press on with our good fortune of a day and take in the downtown square at night.  Cathedral, full moon, hot dogs and beer.  Great, great day.